Arriva London celebrates Payroll Giving in the Lord Mayor's Show 2017

Preparations are complete for our display entry in this year’s Lord Mayor’s Show on Saturday. The Arriva London theme again this year is to celebrate the enormous contribution our staff make to charities through the Payroll Giving scheme. With over 1,000 staff supporting over 160 charities every week, and over £1,000,000 having been given in the last five years.

Last year’s efforts gained us a prestigious Payroll Giving Platinum award, and so this year, forty members of our Platinum Team will be marching with the Arriva London Heritage Fleet’s open top historic Routemaster bus, RMC 1464, displaying the charities they support and encouraging their colleagues and the public to get involved as well.

We are delighted that joining us this year will be the Great Ormond Street mascot bear and Stormy Stan from the RNLI, together with members of the Arriva London team like Claudio, George and Rafiu, all Arriva employees, all Payroll Givers, but all from different backgrounds and beliefs who won, through a ballot, the opportunity to be in the Lord Mayor’s Show procession, coming together in celebration of their common goal - giving to others.

As Claudia says in praise of Payroll Giving: "I think Payroll Giving is a great idea. It’s so easy to do. If everyone does the same, we’ll go a long way. I chose Great Ormond Street Hospital as I love kids and I love to help them."

And Rafiu reflects on his reasons for getting involved: "I support Prostate Cancer UK; it has affected me, and I have been cured 100%. Payroll Giving is so easy to do, it comes out of your wages every week; you don’t even notice it. Payroll Giving gives us the opportunity to give back to charities that really need our help.”

Arriva London, together with Payroll Giving, is currently running a promotional campaign to encourage more employees to give through the scheme, with the aim next year to hopefully win the new Payroll Giving Diamond award, requiring 30% of staff to be giving through the scheme.

We hope you will be at the Lord Mayor’s Show to view the fantastic parade, to celebrate the new Lord Mayor’s appointment, and to see the Arriva London entry.

Look out for our historic Heritage Fleet open top bus, no 89 in the parade, but most important of all, enjoy yourselves and give a wave and a cheer to the representatives of our incredibly generous Arriva London Payroll Giving Platinum Team.

It is not an easy task to design artwork for a bus over 11m long, over 4m high and 2.5m wide, but there were approximately 538 entries from several Primary schools! The sheer number and standard of entries was overwhelming!

The London Bus Awards gives TfL and bus operators the opportunity to recognise the commitment demonstrated on a daily basis from drivers, support teams and frontline TfL staff. The London bus network would not be the same without people of such a high calibre as those nominated for the awards.